Burnt PCIE Slot and riser

[sratra]

Alright guys looks like my first mining rig project has unfortunately hit a snag.
Id just tested mining on a single GPU running on the motherboards 16x slot.

Im running the Z270f from asus and so enabled 4g decoding first.

Soon as I turned it on I smelt smoke so I quickly turned off the machine.
I thought it was my UPS, sitting behind the desk, which did this the day before.

Id gotten it fixed but it was my first instinct to blame it. I turned the rig on after plugging it in straight to the wall and wasnt getting display.
I switched the card and the riser cable but used the same pcie slot. Pretty quickly I saw smoke coming out of the pcie 16x slot and shut the computer down.

Now I have a possibly dead motherboard/GPU(s) and 2 surely dead riser cards. http://imgur.com/a/JfmEs
Where do I even start trying to troubleshoot this?!!

P.S This is the kind of riser I bought > http://www.ebay.in/itm/PCI-E-Express-Powered-Riser-Card-w-60cm-USB-3-0-extender-Cable-1x-to-16x-/222545917629?hash=item33d0c536bd:g:v8IAAOSwXXxZQUBq

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[BadAstroZA]

Did you perhaps put the riser's connection into the PCIe slot *backwards*?

I've made this mistake before on one of my slots. Burned the riser and the PCIe slot, but thankfully my motherboard is still fine.

Saw and smelt smoke, turned off rig instantly. Unfortunately I've lost one slot but the rig on the whole it's still running OK with 5 GPUs, but being the ASUS Z270-AR there's 7 PCIe slots and an m.2 I can use, so I just need more risers to arrive to get the most out of the thing.

Lesson learned though!

[Elder III]

From the look of where the scorch marks are on the riser and the pci-e slot, it appears that you might have installed them backwards (which would cause exactly that to happen)? The pic below (not mine, just an example of google) shows the correct way they should be facing.

[BadAstroZA]

BBC has a great vid that I followed (I still made a mistake though!) that helped me get everything up and running. Not identical but should be similar enough to your ASUS mobo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPU5jL36maw

[Marvell1]

Did you perhaps put the riser's connection into the PCIe slot *backwards*?

I've made this mistake before on one of my slots. Burned the riser and the PCIe slot, but thankfully my motherboard is still fine.

Saw and smelt smoke, turned off rig instantly. Unfortunately I've lost one slot but the rig on the whole it's still running OK with 5 GPUs, but being the ASUS Z270-AR there's 7 PCIe slots and an m.2 I can use, so I just need more risers to arrive to get the most out of the thing.

Lesson learned though!

yeah rookie mistake i did that when i first started using risers too myself dont feel to bad

you most likely fried the pci-e slot and maybe the board and the risers are toast for sure ,the key is to remember that the protruding part of he riser should be in front

[cptfisher]

omg ... it is  not "bad luck " from how you described and from what it is shown on the picture ..... just do yourself a favour and change your project.... if you dont have enough brain to cope with an intuitive proces such as installing the risers it means this kind of stuff is not made for you.  

How could one possibly install in reverse a friggin riser.....

[Faxmate]

omg ... it is  not "bad luck " from how you described and from what it is shown on the picture ..... just do yourself a favour and change your project.... if you dont have enough brain to cope with an intuitive proces such as installing the risers it means this kind of stuff is not made for you.  

How could one possibly install in reverse a friggin riser.....

That happens to many people in the forum.

[Pennywis3]

omg ... it is  not "bad luck " from how you described and from what it is shown on the picture ..... just do yourself a favour and change your project.... if you dont have enough brain to cope with an intuitive proces such as installing the risers it means this kind of stuff is not made for you.  

How could one possibly install in reverse a friggin riser.....

No need to be rude, it can happen to anyone.
 
After hours of messing with the rig you can get tired and make a mistake...

[sratra]

From the look of where the scorch marks are on the riser and the pci-e slot, it appears that you might have installed them backwards (which would cause exactly that to happen)? The pic below (not mine, just an example of google) shows the correct way they should be facing.

http://www.algogo.com/store/product_images/uploaded_images/riserphoto1.jpg

Did you perhaps put the riser's connection into the PCIe slot *backwards*?

I've made this mistake before on one of my slots. Burned the riser and the PCIe slot, but thankfully my motherboard is still fine.

Saw and smelt smoke, turned off rig instantly. Unfortunately I've lost one slot but the rig on the whole it's still running OK with 5 GPUs, but being the ASUS Z270-AR there's 7 PCIe slots and an m.2 I can use, so I just need more risers to arrive to get the most out of the thing.

Lesson learned though!

Yikes I dont know what to say..... Thanks guys. This is what 26 hours of no sleep does.

omg ... it is  not "bad luck " from how you described and from what it is shown on the picture ..... just do yourself a favour and change your project.... if you dont have enough brain to cope with an intuitive proces such as installing the risers it means this kind of stuff is not made for you. 

How could one possibly install in reverse a friggin riser.....

Im more mad at me than you are buddy.

[BadAstroZA]

omg ... it is  not "bad luck " from how you described and from what it is shown on the picture ..... just do yourself a favour and change your project.... if you dont have enough brain to cope with an intuitive proces such as installing the risers it means this kind of stuff is not made for you.  

How could one possibly install in reverse a friggin riser.....

By putting it in backwards. Simple, really.

[EvilMonkey]

For future reference I would also buy better risers.  If you look on the PCI-e connector in your first picture the soldering is really close to each other and a bit messy.

Also there is much better ones for example your one has 3 capacitors which is not terrible but you can get 4 cap ones for the same price.

See this link for pictures.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/PCI-E-PCI-E-Express-1X-to-16X-Riser-Card-USB-3-0-Extender-Cable-SATA/32742035476.html

I am not saying this is a good riser as I don't own it.  But the pictures are a very good example of quality work.

You can see on this riser the 4th cap that yours doesn't have just above it there is 2 small chips.  One with numbers on.  I can't remember the names or what they do but they add extra security for more stable power and something else.

In the future try to only buy ones with these two chips.  The quality of the soldering is a dead giveaway as to if you have a quality riser or not.

[saul.goodman]

You can see on this riser the 4th cap that yours doesn't have just above it there is 2 small chips.  One with numbers on.  I can't remember the names or what they do but they add extra security for more stable power and something else.

In the future try to only buy ones with these two chips.  The quality of the soldering is a dead giveaway as to if you have a quality riser or not.

A lot helps a lot?
All the "bonus" ist just a need to downgrade pcie to 7V.

[grape_tectonics]

They probably sold you shit quality risers.

I also got a bad batch recently, out of the 6 they sent me, only 2 were usable, the rest wouldn't connect the cards or would cause bluescreens etc. I guess I should consider myself lucky since they didn't burn anything.

Also from the pictures on ebay, it seems the bad ones I got are identical to yours, they are also ver 003. Meanwhile I also have a whole pile of ver 006s and all of those work perfectly.

The differences between the two versions are quite large even though they look the same superficially. Different regulator, different caps, different amounts of pcie pins connected to the PCB but most notably the PCB cutting and soldering quality on ver 003 are really bad.